This workshop is on how creative writing, performance and place can work together to enhance understandings of space and placemaking. We will explore different artistic
forms of popular memory to improve citizen awareness, engagement and socio-spatial justice, specifically in cities. We take as our case study the Johannesburg Literary Site-
specific Theatre Project run in 2022/2023, initiated by Alex Halligey through the University of Johannesburg (UJ), in collaboration with Malmö University (MAU). The project solicited
short form writing from unpublished authors on everyday experiences of Johannesburg.
Out of the submissions, a poem by Zandile Dube’s and short stories by Lerato Mahlangu and Teneal Naidoo were used as catalysts for Jade Bowers (UJ) in collaboration with three
professional performers and fourteen UJ undergraduate students, to devise the theatrical work Breaths of Joburg, staged on a pavement in downtown Johannesburg. Høg Hansen,
Rundberg (MAU), Halligey, three MAU MA students and three Johannesburg-based post-graduate students made up a research team collaborating with the artistic writing and
performance process, to understand the knowledge development it was facilitating. The six postgraduate students from MAU and Johannesburg each designed their own research
questions and thematic focal areas which fed into the overarching research initiative. Rundberg set up a multi-camera, live video feed shown through Zoom to an online audience made up of students and members of the public in Johannesburg, Malmö and other global locations.
The pilot involved a temporary exhibition at the Windybrow art centre next to the performance space with project materials visualized and ‘collaged’ in zine/DIY style-
materials. We intend to run new site-specific activities in Malmö, Sweden and Makhanda, South Africa in 2024/2025 and have longer term ambitions of iterations in other European
and African cities.
In the workshop we discuss:
1. How creative writing about places might be returned to the sites of their inspiration through public performances, how these performances might be documented, used for education, and how a trans-medial process might develop knowledge and public discourse on city space and places (drawing from Halligey, 2018, and Høg Hansen et al, 2016).
2. The project’s trans-medial process’s drawing together of different city and online publics may shift perceptions and deepen understandings a) of the lived realities of a specific urban place; b) what we might consider as constituting global presents and futures.
3. A pedagogy of collaborative learning with students, concerned with a) in live situ/engagement in on-site observation, facilitation and media production; b) hybrid and distance learning events (live and recorded for reuse) where mediation and learning are taken beyond site experience and site specificity.
The workshop will showcase and discuss creative writing examples from the initial Joburg writing competition, rehearsal and performance recordings from April 2023, a
documentary film on the project, student thesis works, and other archival materials, such as visuals, zines, and collages from the exhibition.
Workshop Facilitators (in-person and online, several of these optional and others may be added):
Alex Halligey, Project lead/coordinator, Rhodes University, South Africa
Anders Høg Hansen, Projecct lead/coordinator, Malmö University, Sweden
Jade Bowers, Director of pilot production, University of Johannesburg, South Africa
Mikael Rundberg, interaction designer, hybrid teaching pedagogue, Malmö University, Sweden
MAU and UJ MA degree graduates who have produced MA theses on pilot in Johannseburg and optionally other students (MAU, UJ, RU) with skils/interests in the area
Leratu Mahlango, Teneal Naidoo or/and Zandile Dube, creative writing winners for pilot, Johannesburg, South Africa
Oscar Hemer, guest respondent, Malmö University, Sweden
Keywords: Writing, Performance, Cityspace, Mediation, Education
